


let's be alone together

by birdbox (Bella_Barbaric)



Series: two worlds colliding [9]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, F/M, Implied Sexual Content, One Night Stands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-26
Updated: 2014-10-26
Packaged: 2018-02-22 17:25:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2515820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bella_Barbaric/pseuds/birdbox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>and I’d choose you; in a hundred lifetimes, in a hundred worlds, in any version of reality, I’d find you and I’d choose you.</i>
</p><p>“Fancy a beer?”</p><p>Emma briefly considers the pros and cons of his offer. Cons: spending time with her annoying roommate so he can take cheap shots at how badly her date went. Pros: drinking herself into oblivion before she can have a crisis of self-esteem about the string of failed dates she’s been on recently.</p><p>Emma walks over, throws herself on the sofa next to him and holds her hand out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	let's be alone together

Being honest, she doesn’t even _like_ Killian Jones.

He’s messy and smug and annoying and his bed is entirely too close to his goddamned wall -the very same wall that her room is on the other side of- for the number of times he has nameless women in there. Emma has long since lost count of the mornings she’s entered the kitchen in the mornings to find a pile of his dishes dumped in the sink as though he thought they’d wash themselves.

(Well, she supposes he must think they do since Emma ends up doing them most of the time.)

Even if he doesn’t mind capturing the occasional spider since Emma can’t stand the little heathens, it doesn’t mean she likes living with him.

This is all David’s and Mary Margaret’s fault, and that’s a fact Emma never hesitates to remind them of when she visits their nice, clean apartment. Killian is a friend of Mary Margaret’s boyfriend David that Emma hadn’t really known very well before this year but at the time it was all all right since they had all planned to move together after college. Until David and Mary Margaret decided to be turncoats and get their own place together instead, leaving herself and Killian with little option but to move in together and pay a higher share of rent than they were expecting. They both apologised profusely of course for inconveniencing them but still, Emma curses them when she finds take away wrappers left on the coffee table and his smelly socks strewn across the sofa.

 All of this, then, might make it a little difficult to explain why she’s straddling his lap on the very same sofa, fingers in his soft hair in order to tip his head back and currently kissing the shit out of him.

 

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

 

Emma is cold. Emma is wet. Emma is miserable.

Killian is sitting in front of the television with a six pack of beers and a large bag of popcorn when she gets back from her disastrous date (for a start, Emma went dressed for a fancy restaurant, dress and sky-high heels, Walsh took her to his work—the monkey enclosure at the zoo.) She throws her keys on the counter and kicks off her heels with a little too much force so they go flying across the room like suede-covered projectiles.

Killian watches this display with amusement. “Careful, love. You could take someone’s eye out with those,” he says. Emma gives him a thunderous look and practically rips her now-sodden red coat off and drapes it over the back of the barstool.

(Disaster number two: Emma did not take an umbrella. And it rained. A lot.)

 She doesn’t miss Killian’s eyes raking her body in her short leather dress which, okay, is sort of flattering. Walsh barely noticed (though in fairness, she did have to keep her coat on most of the night) and for all his faults, Killian’s a shockingly attractive guy. It’s nice knowing she can capture his attention even looking as much like a drowned cat as she does right now.

“Good night?” he asks, smirking. Emma turns her glare back on him, about to leave and dry off and check herself for the stench of monkey (again) before sleeping until noon tomorrow. Killian’s smile softens from mocking to sympathetic. He lifts the six pack rings of beer in the air. “Fancy a beer?”

Emma briefly considers the pros and cons of his offer. Cons: spending time with her annoying roommate so he can take cheap shots at how badly her date went. Pros: drinking herself into oblivion before she can have a crisis of self-esteem about the string of failed dates she’s been on recently.

Emma walks over, throws herself on the sofa next to him and holds her hand out. Killian nods sagely and presses a beer into her hand. She looks up at the screen.

“What the hell are you watching anyway?”

“ _Peter Pan_ ,” he tells her, offering her the bag of popcorn. Emma takes a handful and shoves them ungracefully into her mouth.

She decides not to question why a grown man is watching a kids film with a pack of beer at nine o’clock on a Saturday night. “Cool,” she says around the popcorn.

 

\- - - -  - - - - - - - - - - - - -

 

By half way through the film, they’ve progressed from beer to the bottle of vodka Emma keeps in the cupboard under the sink, mixing it with a bottle of Coke Killian had in the fridge. It all ends up being more fun than Emma expected, perhaps because they’re both getting progressively drunker but also because Killian can actually be pretty decent company when he wants to be. He keeps the snide comments about her subpar love life to a minimum (except when she tells him about the monkeys--he laughs long and hard at that but Emma finds herself smiling with him) and he’s got an extremely sharp sense of humour that Emma must have missed while being annoyed at him for the four months they’ve been living together.

 “You seriously don’t like Peter Pan… of _Peter Pan_?” Emma demands, perplexed. “He’s the main character! He typifies the ‘loveable rogue’ character personality!”

 Killian screws up his nose in disgust. Emma does _not_ think it’s cute. “He cut off Hook’s hand and fed it to a crocodile and you think he’s loveable? Really? Swan, I have to say, I wonder about you sometimes.” Emma tries to hits him in the arm for that but her aim is off because of the alcohol so she ends up hitting the sofa cushion instead. “Peter Pan literally doesn’t want to grow up, what kind of bloody twisted demon actually wants to stay pre-teen forever? Nah, give me Captain Hook any day.”

“You identify more with Captain Hook than Peter Pan, right. Now there’s a psychological insight into Killian Jones that I really could have done without.”

 Killian smiles but ignores her. “‘Least Hook has some concept of honour. For all his faults-”

“Like wanting to murder children?” Emma supplies. It occurs to her vaguely that this is probably the most intelligent drunk conversation she’s ever has

“-Hook actually follows some kind of code. You know, like good form. I respect the guy for that. Peter Pan just does whatever he can to get ahead, consequences be damned. That’s not—I don’t like that.” Killian leans his head on the back of the sofa, looking at her. Emma glances at the TV screen and laughs. “What?” Killian asks, smiling too.

Emma points at the DVD menu. “The movie finished. We didn’t even notice.”

“So it did,” Killian murmurs, turning his eyes back to hers. “What do we do now?”

For a long minute, the only sound between them is the constant loop of the DVD menu music. Emma’s pretty sure if she wasn’t drunk and unexpectedly proximate to him on the sofa she wouldn’t be entertaining the sort of thoughts she’s currently entertaining about running her hands all over that jaw line of his (though she’d be lying if she said she hadn’t thought about it even while stone cold sober. So what? Being her annoying flatmate doesn’t stop him being a freaking Adonis.)

Killian might not like it but the ‘consequences be damned’ approach has its advantages. The _oh, fuck it_ stream of thought that’s currently running through her brain is what convinces her to lean over their unspoken respectful distance dividing line on the sofa that they’ve gotten progressively closer to crossing all evening and kiss him lightly on the lips.

His lips are soft but ultimately stock-still under hers and Emma pulls away, a cold pit of regret and shame opening in the bottom of her stomach. Killian though, to her surprise, doesn’t look horrified. Far from it, actually. He stares at her from an inch or two away, eyes flicking down to her lips. His hand tangles in her still-damp hair and the next thing Emma knows, they’re kissing again.

The way Emma’s head is turned eventually get awkward and uncomfortable so she shifts herself while they kiss, and Killian’s hands splayed out on each side of her ribcage brings her closer. It’s clear something radical has to be done to make things progress faster so Emma lifts her right leg up and over his, straddling him. The bag of popcorn next to him spills out all over the sofa after her knee tips it over but Emma can’t bring herself to care right now—not while her dress is slowly hitching up her thighs, her hands in his hair.

Her hands trail down his neck and over his collarbones until they find the buttons on his shirt --further down his chest than she expected, but then Killian does have a penchant for having his chest hair on display. Killian stops briefly to ask, breathless: “You sure?”

They’re both drunk, he definitely isn’t who she imagined she might be doing this with tonight but it’s not like she’d ever have the guts to do this while sober. And so what if she’s curious about what sex with him is like? She’s had to listen to him and other women through the thin walls of the apartment for long enough (those women all seemed pretty satisfied judging by the noises they made) so she says, “Yeah.”

His hands slide under her backside and Emma can’t help the surprised yelp she makes when he lifts her effortlessly and carries her through to his room. It’s all she can do to wrap her legs around his waist and hold onto his shoulders for dear life. And no, she definitely doesn’t find it hot when he kicks his bedroom door open so he continue kissing along her jaw.

 _Consequences be damned_ , Emma thinks as they fall together on his bed and his lips find the column of her throat.

 

\- - - - - - - - - - -

 

“This doesn’t mean I like you,” is the first thing Emma says to him when he drags his eyes open.

She’s been awake for an hour or so now, thinking through what this means other than a drunken tryst. It’s tough work when you’ve got a head full of sludge but she knows Killian isn’t going to consider the eventualities that might arise from this and clearly someone has to. It’s highly possible she should have left his bed to do this kind of practical thinking but Killian’s arm is thrown over her and his leg is between hers and there’s no way she’s be able to leave without waking him (and maybe it’s kind of nice.)

Killian squints at her and scrubs a hand down his face, yawning and rolling his shoulders back. Emma’s eyes follow the movement of his muscles before she tears her eyes away. “Thank you, Swan, for not letting me labour under that delusion any longer than necessary,” he mutters, voice rough with sleep and hangover.

“This was a one-time thing,” Emma continues. She stops short of labelling it a mistake even though any objective person would call drunken sex with your roommate a mistake, the objective person hasn’t felt the pleasure of Killian Jones’ talented fingers and tongue.

Killian huffs out a breath through his nose, closing his eyes and smiling like he’d been expecting this. “Of course it was.”

Emma can’t work out his tone so she chooses to take his words at face value. “Just wanted to make sure we’re clear,” she says. Before her brain can catch up with her, she adds. “Anyway, you and me would never work. You’re… messy.”

At this, Killian gives her a blank look. She shouldn’t have said anything. “You wouldn’t –hypothetically- go out with me because I can’t keep the flat tidy?”

“Well, that too. But that’s not what I mean when I say ‘messy’.”

“Well, do tell,” Killian says with something like sarcasm. Emma ignores it.

“First, there’s the lease. We still have eight months left on the lease to live out and I barely tolerate you as it is. When the relationship between us inevitably went south it’d be unbearable. Then there’s David and Mary Margaret.”

“David and Mary Margaret,” he echoes. “Really.”

It’s not a question but Emma quickly elaborates anyway, wanting to draw the intense focus of his eyes off her. “We’re both friends with them and they’d be affected when we broke up and I don’t wanna put them in that situation–even if they’re technically the reasons we’re in this mess; I bet this wouldn’t have happened if they’d moved in with us like they said they were going to.”

Killian smirks. “Don’t be so sure. Clearly you find me even more irresistible after a few libations, Swan.”

Him and his stupid vocabulary. “So clearly, we should just forget this happened and go back to how things were.”

Killian doesn’t say anything for a while and Emma wonders whether or not to gather up her clothes and leave now they’ve had The Talk. The sooner things go back to normal the better. She’s about to get up when Killian says, “You sound like you’ve given this a fair bit of thought.”

“Not really,” Emma lies. It’s weirder to admit you’ve spent an hour watching someone sleep and going through every eventuality of a possible relationship with them, all of which -in her head at least- ended up in the _crashing-and-burning-with-many-casualties_ category. Herself and Killian would be the human relationship equivalent of cats and dogs when it got really bad. And she has no doubt it would.

She sits up, gathering his quilt around her naked body and fighting the head rush of a night two cans of beer and countless vodkas and coke. Her dress and tights are a crumpled heap next to the bed and she’s not physically or mentally prepared to force herself back into it just for the walk across the corridor. Killian has a soft dark blue robe on a chair next to the bed. “Do you mind?” she asks shyly, gesturing to it. He shakes his head no and Emma wraps it around herself tightly as she gets up and gathers her clothes.

 Emma stops by the door, pulling her lip into her mouth. “So,” she starts. “We’re agreed? We go back to normal?”

His expression doesn’t change much and Emma can’t work out what he’s thinking for the life of her. “Yep,” he says, the note of cheeriness sounding a little false. “You’ve convinced me: I’m messy.”

 

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

 

(Try as she might to ignore it, walking into a gleaming kitchen the next morning with all the dishes washed, dried and put away where they should be feels a lot more significant than a nice roommate gesture.)


End file.
